Critical Role: Safety
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: In the early days of their adventures, the members of Vox Machina get to know their gunslinger.


Vex is flat on her back on the packed-dirt ground, the better to warm her feet by the campfire without overheating the rest of her, when the soft sound of rustling cloth alerts her to someone moving nearby. Squinting one eye open, she glances over to see that her fellow night-watcher, the human newcomer to their little team, has left his post at the edge of the campsite to sit down on a fallen log nearer to her. In the dim, flickering glow of firelight, she can just make out a furrowed brow behind the glint of his glasses.

"Don't worry, darling," she says softly. "Trinket will spot anything we miss, and Tiberius said something about setting an alarm spell before he dropped off."

Percy rubs his arms and glances over his shoulder at the sleeping forms of the rest of the party, although he really can't be seeing much with his human vision. "It was cold," he says, so quietly she has to push herself up on her elbows to hear better. "Thought I'd warm up by the fire for a while. I can go back to patrolling in a moment."

"You don't need to justify yourself to me," Vex says. "To any of us, really. Believe it or not, we've figured out that this isn't really something you've done before. We're not going to give you a hard time."

Percy shoots her a look that makes her stifle a laugh.

"Okay," she says, lowering herself back to rest her head on the ground, "we'll totally give you a hard time. But we won't mean it, not really. You wouldn't be here, otherwise."

"I don't wish to sound ungrateful." He pulls out his strange little weapon and adjusts bits and pieces of the machinery in a way that's as mysterious to her as Tiberius' spells. "But that was more luck than anything else. If you all hadn't happened upon my cell..."

"All right," Vex says, "then you're lucky. The way things have been going, we could use a little luck around here."

He makes a strangled sound that she eventually diagnoses as a particularly weak laugh. "I wouldn't say I'm lucky."

Vex shrugs, digging her shoulder blades into the dirt. "You're alive. I don't know about you, but for me, some days, that's lucky enough."

He's quiet for long enough that curiosity gets the better of her and she twists in place to see him staring back at the others with a look of wistfulness she's seen on him a few times before, whenever she teases Vax or he messes up her hair, whenever Grog and Pike get the giggles over some moment in their shared history. "Regardless," he says eventually, like he hadn't just zoned out for a few minutes, "I'm glad to be here now."

Vex settles back for a moment, but the ground is feeling less and less like the best possible way to stretch out her back and more and more like the best possible way to pull a muscle or something. With a grumpy sigh, she rolls to her feet and goes to sit beside Percival on the fallen log. He smiles at her, no shyness, all distracted amusement. It puts her hackles up, a bit. She figures, white hair aside, that he's a number of years younger than she is. The wise-old-man act is pretentious at best.

"It's okay to be a little frightened," she says, fishing, and is rewarded by a genuine jolt of reaction, a startled glance. "Even Grog spends some of the time scared, you know."

This time, Percy's look back to the others very obviously lights on the snoring goliath. "Truly a wilting flower," he says. "And I appreciate the effort, but it isn't okay, not really. Not the way I've been frightened."

Vex pulls her knees up to her chest, balancing on the mossy log. "Ah," she says. "Like that."

He's quiet a moment beside her, fidgeting with his weapon. "Are you going to tell me that, even without knowing all the particulars, I should forgive myself for whatever I've done?"

"Do you want me to?"

A pause. "Absolutely not."

She grins. "Percival, even without knowing all the particulars, I think you should forgive yourself for whatever you've done."

He glares, but a smile breaks through the mask. "I could've stayed out on the perimeter keeping watch, you know. I didn't come back to the campsite to be mocked."

"Then wow, did you ever come to the wrong campsite." She cautiously leans over to nudge his shoulder with hers. "Hey," she says, and points up. "You seem like the sort of person who'd know something about stars. Our mother used to tell us stories, but I've forgotten them. Something about monsters and heroes."

He peers up, squinting like he's taking aim on the battlefield. Then he looks at her out of the corner of his eye, looks back at the sky, and the lines on his face fade, relax. "No," he says. "My interests were always a little more... grounded."

"Too bad," she says.

He exhales. Slowly. "My mother told me those stories, too."

Eventually he'll get up and go back to his patrolling without a word. Eventually she'll join Trinket and start a counter-patrol of her own. Eventually the entire group will stir with a great deal of grumbling and good-natured grumpiness and continue onward to their greater destiny.

But for a little while, at least, they watch the stars, distant pinpricks in the heavy veil of night, tiny glimpses into the unfathomable brightness past the dark.

* * *

Percy is an odd duck. That's a phrase Pike's heard Wilhand use a lot over the years, generally to refer to himself or Pike or Grog, and it's always so cheerfully understated and such a weird mental picture that she can't help but laugh to think of it.

She says it aloud, once, without thinking, and Percy turns to look at her without breaking stride, his face the picture of aristocratic offense. "I'm a _what_?"

"An odd duck," she says, cheerfully. "Nothing wrong with that. Probably why you fit in so well."

Percy looks ahead to the rest of the group; she's not sure he's noticed that whenever she slows her pace, he keeps back as well. She's certainly made a conscious effort to do the same for him. "Fitting in with this group is a bit of a mixed blessing, I think," he says.

She swats him on the knee, and he hops away, looking even more stuffy and offended. "That's not very nice."

"You called me a _duck_."

"An odd one. Which is objectively the best kind." She raises her holy symbol in one hand. "Sarenrae's pretty fond of odd ducks."

She's pretty sure she can actually see his brain stutter to a halt behind his glasses. "What a startling theological concept."

"You know, you don't have to be so aloof all the time," she says. "Unless it really helps, I guess. We all care a great deal about you."

Now his brain really does seem to stop working altogether. She leaves him behind for a couple paces before he lengthens his stride effortlessly to close the gap.

He doesn't say anything, so she adds, "I mean it. I don't want to pry, because I know we all have our problems, but just know that you have a family with us."

"I appreciate the thought," Percy says, eventually, "but in my experience, family is something that involves a great deal of paperwork and politicking. This doesn't exactly bear a resemblance."

"Family's a lot of things," Pike says.

"That seems needlessly complicated."

"It's exactly the opposite." She fingers the edge of her holy symbol, feels the faint glow. "I've spent a lot of time learning about redemption. Second chances, you know?"

"I am aware of Sarenrae's domain," Percy says.

Pike shrugs. "Beyond that, even. I mean, a lot of my life changed when Grog came stumbling into the family. He stood up for us, so we stood up for him. I'd already started my formal training as a cleric, and it seemed like a lesson. I treated it like one, and I got a brother out of the deal."

"That's very nice," he says, "but I'm not entirely sure why you're telling me this."

"You have a place here, you fit in, but I think you're holding yourself separate," she says. "And that's okay, if it's really helping with... whatever happened to you. Whatever you think you did."

He cuts in, uncharacteristically cold. "What I didn't do."

"What you think you could have changed." She raises a hand. "I'm not trying to lecture you, Percy, or pry, or any of that. Relax. I'm just saying, when you're ready to talk about it, we'll be there to back you up. Family's always got each other's backs, right? We don't abandon each other. That's how it works."

Percy stops, exhales sharply, and sits down, digging at the ties on his boot. "Stone in here's been driving me mad the past few miles," he says. "Go on ahead, I'll catch up."

But he's closer to eye-level, now, and Pike takes the opportunity to look him over. Thinks on what she just said that could've caused such an extreme reaction from somebody so restrained. "You feel like you abandoned your family?" she asks, cautiously.

"I did," Percy says. He stops pretending to fuss with his boot. "I don't remember a lot, but I do know that when it mattered most, I ran."

"Percy," she says. Up ahead, Grog looks back, concerned; she waves for him to keep walking.

Percy shrugs, staring down at the dirt. "I'm not fishing for pity. But you've been very kind. You deserve to know who you have watching your back in battle."

She hesitates, then reaches out, touches him under the chin; he flinches up, looks straight into her eyes. "Redemption and second chances," she says. "Odd ducks, remember? I trust you. We all do. You've earned that."

He sighs, pushes himself to his feet. Says, again, "You've been very kind."

And as they walk, trailing the rest of their family, he slows his pace just a little, keeping by her side.

* * *

Percy stares at him like he's just suggested they engage Grog in intellectual debate. "You want to _what_?"

Vax grins, idly weaving a dagger between his knuckles. Percy's not the only one with a flare for the dramatic, after all. "Spar, de Rolo. Do a little informal training."

At his words, most of the rest of the group immediately gets distracted from setting up camp. Grog loudly settles down on a log, cupping his chin in his hands with a grin, and Pike clambers up next to him, gnawing on some sort of stale rations. Vex is murmuring something that sounds suspiciously like she's trying to get Scanlan to go in on a bet with her. Only Tiberius and Keyleth stay a little removed from the group, Tiberius grumbling under his breath as he uses some sort of magic to set up a tent. Keyleth also seems to be trying really hard to act like she disapproves, but Vax is pretty sure he catches her glancing over her shoulder more than once.

"What do you say? One-on-one?"

Percy still looks like someone shat in his breakfast. "I'm not going to shoot you, Vax."

"We do have healers," Vax says, but catches his sister's glower. "Still, I think this might be a good opportunity to make sure you know what to do when somebody closes range with you. You've had a pretty good time of it so far staying in the trees and on walls, but sooner or later somebody's going to notice you're keeping out of all the fun and they're gonna drag you in and fuck you up."

Percy stiffens. "I am well-trained with a blade."

"So show me," Vax says, and lunges.

Percy darts back—points to him on reaction time, at least—and manages to draw his sword to deflect the second strike. The sword's a loaner from some dead bandit who has no particular need of it anymore, and it's honestly just a piece of shit from what Vax can see, but de Rolo knows which end is the sharp bit, at least, and manages to turn his panicked parry into a clumsy counter. Vax sidesteps, backs up to give them both a little room. "Not bad."

"En garde," Percy says, slipping into a stance that looks like something Vax's Syngoran instructors would've swooned over.

"Fuck you," Vax says, and closes the distance between them with a wide feint to Percy's left arm before whirling around to kick him in the now-unguarded nads.

With a strangled exhale of breath—echoed by a sympathetic groan from the onlookers—Percy doubles over... and draws his blade free from where he'd managed to plunge it into Vax's right shoulder in the same motion. Vax stumbles back, the pain just beginning to register, and winces as his right hand spasms, nearly dropping his blade. "Sneakier than you look, de Rolo," he says. Percy makes no move to straighten up, breathing hard. "But you have to be more ready than that for someone to fight dirty. You have to—"

Percy takes a swing at him with his unarmed hand. It's a wild haymaker of a punch—he's maybe one step up from the time Vax, as a child, broke his thumb by keeping it inside his fist—and Vax has plenty of time to turn with it and reduce the impact. The second strike, with the hilt of the sword, is more controlled and has the added bonus of hitting Vax squarely in the bad shoulder. He stumbles back, swearing, but can't quite stifle a smile. Percy's hair is sticking up wildly, his eyes are still watering from the below-the-belt hit, and he's the closest Vax has ever seen him come to an outright grin.

"All right," Vax says. "Don't get cocky."

He drops before Percy can react, swings a leg out and catches him in the ankle, sending him ass-over-teakettle onto the ground. There's a satisfying gasp and wheeze, and Vax steps over to loom above him. Percy, trying desperately to catch his breath, raises both hands in a show of surrender.

Just to be safe, Vax kicks the sword away from his side so it spins off into the grass. "All right," he says. "Message received. You can take care of yourself at close quarters. Mostly."

"Would you—" Percy coughs, propping himself up on his elbows. "Would you teach me some of that? The finer parts of dirty fighting never quite made it to my lessons."

"Don't teach him to go for the nads!" Grog calls from the sidelines.

"No one should have that much power," Scanlan says.

Vax ignores both of them, offering his right hand to Percy, who takes it without hesitation. With an only slightly exaggerated grunt of effort, Vax lifts him halfway to his feet, then lets him drop back to the dirt with a resounding thud. "Oh no," he says, deadpan. "My poor shoulder just hurts so badly. Sorry about that, de Rolo. Call it lesson number one?"

On the ground again, Percy wheezes, "I hate you," but he's got that wild grin on his face again, and Vax figures there's probably hope for him yet.

* * *

Percy's a bit of a mystery, all things considered. He's a snob, he's full of himself, and he makes a point of valuing all the things that Keyleth finds most distasteful and, frankly, most frightening about her own upbringing: the idea that power should be gained by blood and some elusive sense of destiny rather than hard work and extensive qualifications. The idea that leadership is a distasteful inevitability. For somebody the party picked up in some nameless jail cell, he sure looks and acts like the worst kind of aristocrat.

But most baffling of all, she finds herself actively enjoying his company.

There's something about the way he slips so effortlessly into rich-bastard mode that makes it feel like a very self-aware act, like he's parodying the people he's trying to emulate. He'll talk about the importance of bloodlines and there'll be real passion in his words, sure, but he'll simultaneously seem to be acknowledging exactly how much of it is bullshit. Treating the mask as a necessary evil, maybe. She overthinks things, she knows, but she's pretty sure she's not overthinking this.

So she's not entirely surprised when he sits down beside her one night as she's studying and says, "Tiberius tells me you're some sort of princess."

"Um," Keyleth says. It takes her a moment to rally. "I mean, not really in the strictest sense, that's just something he likes to say. You know Tiberius. It's complicated, sort of."

He shrugs, reading a little bit over her shoulder. "But you will rule."

She resists the urge to slam the book shut. He's not going to be able to understand much in the way of druidic magic, anyway. "Sure. Eventually. I guess. Look, it's a bit of a sore spot, Percy."

"It shouldn't be," he says. "You'd really be rather good at it."

She squints at him. "Frankly, I... don't know whether to take that as a compliment or not."

"And that's why you'd do so well."

She closes the book, leaning back to try and get a better look at him. He looks a little scruffy in the wavering firelight, a bit disheveled, but he doesn't seem to be on the verge of immediate death or anything. "What's wrong?"

He blinks. "Nothing's wrong."

"You're just not typically so effusive with your praise. Sarcasm, sure, but not so much with the compliments."

He leans back, stretching his arms over his head. Buying himself time to think? She hasn't seen him this off-guard in a long time. "I'm trying this new thing where I say words that make people feel better from time to time."

"Uh-huh." She places her book aside, manages to catch his eye. "What's wrong? And remember, you're the one that came over here to talk to me. And trust me, if I'm the one picking up on this interpersonal cue, it's pretty damn obvious."

He huffs out a sigh, straightens his collar. "It's an anniversary, of sorts," he says, and smiles, a little self-deprecatingly. "A sore spot."

"Anniversary of what?" she asks, before catching herself. "Uh. Sorry. You don't have to answer that."

"Mistakes," he says, and shrugs. "I really was honestly curious about the princess thing. It can be a little isolating to be surrounded by, well."

Keyleth follows his gaze to the rest of the party, engaged in some sort of heated argument at the other end of their camp. "Bastards and thieves?"

That startles a laugh out of him. "I was going to be a little more circumspect, but yes. As I was saying, I appreciate the chance to have someone who truly understands and embraces the absurdities of being titled."

"I wouldn't say I embrace them," Keyleth says. "More like run screaming at every possible opportunity."

"Also a viable option," Percy says.

"I'm not really titled," Keyleth says. "It's not really a thing like that. Druids traditionally aren't so..."

"Stuffy?"

She grins. "I was going to be a little more circumspect, but yes."

"If it helps," he says, "I was never born to rule. I was the third of seven children."

"You have brothers and sisters?" Keyleth says. "Wow. I never would've guessed. What are they like?"

His face shutters. Oh. Okay. "Ruling was never something I was going to do, but I knew exactly how to play the part. To me, it seems like you may be in the opposite situation: certain that you will one day rule but less certain of your acting abilities."

Keyleth laughs, nervously. "You could say that, sure."

He raises a hand like he's raising a delicate glass in a toast. "Then I propose an alliance, of sorts, against the absurd vagaries of titled rule."

Her grin turns effortless. "I can get behind that, Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III."

"Oh gods," he says. "Just call me Percy."

* * *

Grog loves battle. He loves the sound of it, the smell of it, the taste of it. It floods his senses, it drowns his brain out, and more than anything else, it's _fucking awesome_.

Which is why it's always a bit of a shock to remember just how bad it feels when one of the others gets really hurt for the first time. He remembers Pike taking a bad slash to the shoulder, tiny little body bleeding out into the grass. He remembers Tiberius badly burned by some sort of magic. Vex getting smashed into a wall by an ogre who didn't much appreciate her arrows. Vax triggering a trap and falling to a hail of poison darts. Scanlan moving too close to an enraged little monster-thing and getting dragged underwater for a bit too long.

Like, they always survive. That's kind of what they do. But for a little while, especially that first time, it seems like they won't, and that's enough to sully even the greatest memories of skull-splitting. Hardly seems fair.

The first time Percy gets well and truly fucked up in battle, he and Grog are alone, separated from the others. Grog's playing bodyguard to Percy's sniper, his job being to make sure nobody gets at Percy up on his little perch where he's raining chaos and big ol' explosions down on the bandit camp. And look, Grog's normally pretty damn good at playing bodyguard, but this time there's this sneaky little fuck who comes up behind and sticks two knives in Percy's back before Grog even has time to turn around. Grog makes sure the bandit pays for his strikes fair-like, in blood and entrails, but by the time he's done Percy is curled gasping on the ground.

"Whoa," Grog says. "Hey, Percy." He bends down, and Percy coughs flecks of blood in his face. "Damn. He got you pretty good." He thinks of Pike, says, "Keep looking at me, though, right? Don't fall asleep."

Percy nods, shakily. Grog turns him over, gentle as he can, to look at the nasty gashes in his back. One of them is low and deep and probably hit some guts or something. The other is higher, and the blood coming out is real bright, and Grog has a pretty good idea what that means. He pushes a big hand against that wound, shifts Percy a bit so his head lolls back and Grog can see his face.

His eyes are wide, terrified. Grog says, "You're bleeding pretty bad. I don't have a potion. I can yell for Pike, but I don't know if she'll hear me."

And then he's distracted, because Percy's tugging at his own ear, trying to speak around the blood bubbling in his mouth. Can't hear either? Was there another knife? Was—oh. He reaches down to yank off Percy's earring and bellows into it, "Percy's hurt! We need a healer now!"

A bunch of voices come over the magical earring all at once—he's gotta get Tiberius to make him one of these things—but the noise is cut through by Pike's words. "I'm almost there, Grog. I saw him fall."

"Well," Grog says, "that's that."

Percy glares at him, rolls his eyes.

"Oh," says Grog. "Yeah, you couldn't hear that. Pike's almost here. I can keep you alive that long, at least."

Percy gives a little sigh, and Grog settles back on his butt, pulling Percy up with him to get a better grip on the wound that's still pulsing lifeblood all over the grass. Humans are a little less feather-light than gnomes or even half-elves. Bit lighter than dragonborn. Grog's carried a lot of his friends over the years, knows how small they really are when they're all limp and tired, like bags of bones. Percy, his breathing quick and wheezy, feels really, really small in his arms.

Pike shows up really quick, because she's Pike and she's always there when you need her. She pumps healing magic into Percy until he stops drooling blood and gets a bit of that stick-up-his-ass posture back.

"Sorry," Grog says, when she's done and moving back to help the others.

Percy looks at him, eyes still clouded with pain, and says, "You saved my life, Grog. You heard Pike. I would've bled to death if you hadn't been there."

"Yeah, but I was supposed to be guarding you."

"You did a fine job, Grog," says Percy, and then, under his breath, "I can't believe I'm trying to reassure a blood-stained goliath."

"Oh yeah," Grog says, looking down at himself. "Lot of that is yours, I think."

Percy smiles, strained. "Charming. But I do owe you my life. I hope I can repay the favor, if it comes to that."

"Look," Grog says. "Just don't die, okay? It's bad enough not being able to enjoy these battles because one of my friends got fucked up. Anything more permanent and all the fun might go out of it. Deal?"

"Wouldn't want that," Percy says, with a weak laugh. "All right. Deal."

* * *

Tiberius is halfway through reading a rather promising tome about a series of strange artifacts minted in distant Ank'harel when Percy walks by the open door, grabbing his attention. "Percy!" he calls, and adds, "Just a moment," and goes back to reading the current chapter while Percy walks into the room. And, all right, he reads the next chapter as well. It's interesting material! Besides, Percy has a gift of patience that so many of their compatriots are missing. They're at the inn for the night, there's nowhere to rush to. He finishes one more chapter, then looks up, startled at how much the light has changed in the room.

Percy is posted up in one corner, leaning against the wall and fiddling with his pepperbox. He looks up when Tiberius does. "Yes?"

Tiberius clears his throat, a little embarrassed at the hint of exasperation in Percy's voice. He hadn't intended to get _that_ engrossed in his reading. "Percy. Hello. I was wondering if you could answer a question or two about humans for me. I haven't really had that many encounters with your kind outside of formal, academic settings, which as you might imagine are a little limiting when it comes to meaningful details of any sort."

"I'm happy to help out where I can," Percy says, a little warily. "Help separate the truth from the lies, as it were."

"Wonderful," says Tiberius. "I understand that your people have elaborate defecation rituals passed on from generation to generation."

Percy's voice cracks a little. "Um. That's definitely not a thing."

"Really?" Tiberius squints at Percy over his spectacles. "All right. I heard an entire lecture on the topic once... but if you're sure, I suppose you would be the one to know. Is it true that your lifespan is comparable to those of dragonborn?"

"Well," Percy says, "that depends how long dragonborn tend to live."

"Eighty years, give or take."

"That's pretty close, yes."

"Fascinating." Tiberius makes a note of that in the margin of his book. He'll probably remember the page. "I've always been curious. How do your people view death, especially in the context of having it come so much sooner than many other races?"

Percy furrows his brow. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Everybody views death differently."

"Granted," says Tiberius. "You personally, then. Even should you and I live to a ripe old age—and I have every intention of dying peacefully in my sleep—we'll still die long before any of the others in our little group. How does that make you feel?"

Percy snorts. An expression crosses his face that Tiberius isn't entirely sure he understands; the malleable plasticity of flesh has always been a little more difficult to interpret than scales. But Percy's voice is calm enough when he speaks. "You certainly don't mince words. To be honest, I have no particular expectation of living very long. Not the way things are going. Not the way they've gone in the past."

"Ah," Tiberius says, "Worvull's Fallacy."

"I'm not familiar."

"A most famous scholar from Draconia. She's really quite impressive. I have a book I could lend you. The fallacy is the notion that what happens in the past and what happens in the present must necessarily be the sole determinators of what happens in the future. Many find the fallacy tempting because of its linear nature, but it proves wrong far more often than it proves right. Put simply, a man in your position is more likely to find something worth living for than he might otherwise believe."

"It's a good thought," Percy says.

"Of course it is. I thought it." Tiberius smiles, and waits for Percy to mirror the expression. "It's a strange little family we're cultivating, here. Death is an inevitability, but we can still do everything in our power to delay it. There's worth in that. Great worth. Would you like to borrow it now?"

Percy blinks. "Hm?"

"The Collected Works of Worvull," Tiberius says, and digs around in his bag until he finds the worn paperback copy he'd had printed before leaving Draconia. "One of my most prized possessions. You can keep it, if you'd like. I think I have most of it memorized."

Percy hesitates, then takes it, turning it over in his hands. "Thank you, Tiberius," he says, softly.

"She has a great deal to say about how important it is to be kind. It seems like that lesson might perhaps be even more important for somebody like you and somebody like me, with the time we have left." He waits a moment, then adds, wincing slightly, "Actually, I really would rather you return the book to me eventually. I think I may have placed some vital spellcasting notes in the margins at some point..."

Percy flips through it, eyes widening at the prodigious scribbles across the printed pages. "That seems fair. I'll return it once I've read it. Thank you again, Tiberius. Did you have any more questions for me?"

"No, no," Tiberius says, waving a hand. "You'll be useless unless you've read Worvull. Go take a look, and we'll talk about it once you're finished."

"All right." Percy places the book in a pouch, moves to leave.

"Percy." Tiberius waits until he turns back. "There are worse things than living on and living well. You might consider the possibility."

"I'll do some research," Percy says, but he's smiling as he leaves Tiberius to his reading.

* * *

The prison is one of the seedier variety of jails Scanlan has seen in his long experience with being (wrongfully) arrested, (wrongfully) locked up, and (wrongfully!) just generally forgotten and left to rot in a cell. There are cobwebs in the corners—have a little respect for the illusion of upkeep, at least!—and mold creeps along the floor in suspicious corners of each cell. The smell is an appalling mix of sweat and even less savory bodily fluids. Tiberius in particular threw prestidigitations left, right, and center the moment they arrived.

But now everyone's engaged in a really boring series of negotiations upstairs, and Scanlan's been at loose ends ever since getting them in the door. Dimension Door would've been pretty entertaining, but he settled for strolling down here when nobody was looking. And now, wow. Boring budget prison #212. Real great job on the originality, there.

"This place is a disaster," he tells a skeleton grinning at him from inside the first cell he passes. "You should fire your interior decorator."

There's a shifting of cloth somewhere up ahead. Scanlan sucks in a breath, readies an invisibility spell, but holds off. No shouting. Who doesn't shout for help when some stranger traipses into a prison and starts talking to skeletons?

He moves toward the source of the noise, passing another couple bodies in various stages of decomposition, and comes to a halt next to the fourth cell in the row.

A human—a _live_ human—is sitting on the packed-dirt floor of the cell, knees hugged up to his chest, staring off into the distance. There's a cut across his forehead that looks like it might still be bleeding sluggishly, and his hair is an alarming shade of white, especially since the kid looks barely this side of his teens. Shitty prisoner's clothes, but what looks like really expensive gold glasses with little additional lenses on each end. Those things probably cost a fortune. What the hell is someone like that doing in a place like this?

Well. Can't hurt to ask.

"Hi," Scanlan says. "What the hell is someone like you doing in a place like this?"

The man blinks, slowly, like he's coming back to himself, then turns his head to glance at Scanlan. "Rotting away, I suppose," he says. Real posh voice, too. Huh.

"Cool, cool," Scanlan says. "That sounds like a good time."

"It's certainly given me time to think."

"So," Scanlan says. "Serial killer?"

The man glares at him over his glasses.

"Particularly prolific jaywalker?"

Another glare.

"Work with me here. Why'd they lock you up? Does it involve animals?"

This glare is accompanied by a particularly offended nostril-flare.

"I mean, I honestly don't care all that much unless it's something to do with hurting kids."

"Nothing like that," the man says. He's looking at Scanlan like he's trying to solve some particularly weird puzzle. Scanlan's pretty used to that look by now. "Attempted murder, if you must no."

"Oh, is that all," Scanlan says, and edges a few steps back from the cell.

"Hardly an attempt. I never even got close enough to see her face." The man lowers his head to his arms again. "Just go away. I have a lot of rotting away to get in before the end of the day."

"All right," Scanlan says. "I'm just gonna keep poking around here without anybody's permission. Goodbye."

No reply from the little ball of angst in the corner of the cell. Shrugging, Scanlan makes his way along the rest of the line of cells, confirming their lack of living residents, then traces his way back, this time using his shawm to clack-clack-clack along the bars, whistling as he walks.

"Would you stop that?"

He pauses, doubles back to the one occupied cell. The man is still huddled in the corner. Glaring again. Quelle surprise. "Too loud? Sorry."

The man gives a chuckle that's a little unnerving. "It's very hard to wallow with cheerful whistling in the background."

"Sorry," Scanlan says again, raising his hands. "Far be it for me to get in the way of a good wallow."

The man squints. "Are you really here with nobody's permission?"

"I got bored upstairs," Scanlan says. "My friends are doing some negotiating, and I'm usually really good at talking but those people are just so _dull_. This seemed like a more interesting prospect."

"Fascinating," the man says, deadpan.

Scanlan leans on the bars. "So who'd you try to kill?" When the guy looks like he's reverting back to ball-of-misery form again, he adds, "Seriously, you've got nobody else to talk to here. I'm bored, you're bored. Spill it."

"She tortured me," the man says. Each word sounds like it takes a concerted physical effort. "She's responsible for the deaths of many people I loved."

Scanlan stares at him through the bars until the man looks away and curls in on himself again. "Well, shit," Scanlan says. "That sounds like a pretty good reason for attempted murder."

"I thought so," the man says, into his arm. "I'm not so sure anymore."

"Look," Scanlan says, "I know a guy. Well, I know a bunch of people. They're pretty good at attempted murder, you know? Subscribe to the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed school of thought there."

"I have no interest in hiring mercenaries. This is personal."

"We're not," says Scanlan, and thinks about it for a moment. "Okay, no, mercenaries is fair." He taps the bars, opens his mouth, then closes it. Goes back to pacing the corridor for a moment. Comes back to the cell. "You're just gonna stay there, huh?"

"Rotting away, remember?"

"Okay."

There's silence for a while, until the man glances up. "What's that hissing sound?"

"The acid I just poured into your cell's lock," Scanlan says. "I mean, I know a guy for locks, too, but he's also busy with dull people right now. This works too."

That gets the man to stumble to his feet; one of his legs has a tear in the trousers, and he limps heavily as he makes his way to the door of the cell. Scanlan stands his ground, staring up. "Why are you doing this?"

Scanlan shrugs. "Let's say I know a thing or two about angsty pasts. But I also know a thing or two about wanting to belong somewhere." He rattles the bars until the destroyed lock jangles free. He grins. "We're a bunch of misfits and assholes, but I think there's something better in all of us. And maybe there's something better in you, too. No pressure. You can always kill us all in our sleep and run away."

The man exhales once, almost a laugh. "Who are you?"

"Scanlan Shorthalt," he says. "Of the Super High Intensity Team. We're new in town, you may not have heard of us yet."

"You call yourself the SHITs."

"We're a work in progress." Despite the unlocked door, Scanlan sticks his hand through the bars. After a moment's hesitation, the man bends down to shake it. "And who exactly are you?"

"Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III," the man says, all in one breath.

"Uh-huh," says Scanlan. "I'm gonna go ahead and call you Percy." He hauls back on the bars, then waits for Percy to help him out with the pulling, which kinda ruins the drama of the moment, but hey, what's done is done. He's just adopted a convicted wannabe murderer. The others are definitely gonna kill him.

Percy stares at him for a long moment before limping through the open door of his cell, looking around the prison like it's something he's never seen before. "Thank you," he says, softly.

"Don't thank me yet," says Scanlan. "You haven't smelled Grog. Welcome to the family, Percy."


End file.
